Monday, April 17, 2017

A visit to the mysterious and beautiful Carrizo Plain

Here are some photographs from the wildflower bloom in the Carrizo Plain in California.The pictures were taken this past Friday, April 14, 2017.The Carrizo Plain is an arid valley with no outlet for runoff -- and contains an alkali lakebed known as Soda Lake which is usually completely dry and chalky, similar to alkali lakebeds located throughout the southwest in other areas with extremely high salt content, such as the Great Salt Lake in Utah.Below is a satellite map from Google Maps showing the Carrizo Plain and Soda Lake, with the approximate viewing area for the above panoramic photo indicated with red lines representing the left and right boundaries of the panorama:

The ridge line which bounds the valley along the left side of the photograph (the northern boundary of the valley, known as the Temblor Range) follows the line of the San Andreas fault as it runs from the northwest to the southeast in the above satellite image. The ridgeline on the south which forms the western and southern boundary of the Carrizo Plain is known as the Caliente Range.This year, due to unusual volumes of rain (after several years of drought), Soda Lake is still covered with water -- which has also contributed to a spectacular wildflower bloom. Below is a photo looking across Soda Lake, in which you can see the shallow water coming almost to the edge of the alkali flats:

As you can see from the photograph, the eastern side of the lake (far side of the lake from the perspective of this photograph) is blanketed with wildflowers, as are many of the slopes and ridges of the Temblor Range. The wildflowers become thicker the further south along the lake you go. Below is another satellite image, showing the location of the photographer's point of view in the above photo looking east across Soda Lake, with red lines to indicate the approximate left and right boundaries of the above photograph's field of view:

There are several articles which describe this year's incredible wildflower bloom in the Carrizo Plain, such as this one from the Los Angeles Times (includes some beautiful photos of the wildflowers) and this one from Tom Stienstra of the San Francisco Chronicle.What those articles don't mention, however, is the fact that this same valley is also the home to the Native American sacred site known as Painted Rock.

Several previous posts have discussed Painted Rock, and its important ancient petroglyphs (now severely damaged by vandalism, which probably took place beginning in the 1930s). For previous posts about Painted Rock, see:

As the third of the posts listed above explains, the geology of the Carrizo Plain, as well as the geology of Painted Rock itself, provide important evidence of cataclysmic events in earth's distant past -- evidence which adds to the abundance of other geological and archaeological evidence around the world which argues for catastrophic models of earth's ancient history, despite the fact that for the past two hundred years or so, such models have been shut out of conventional academia, which enforces a strict doctrine of uniformitarianism.

Not only does Painted Rock itself bear unmistakable signs of being a liquefaction mound, a phenomenon described in detail by catastrophist geologist Dr. Walt Brown, originator of the hydroplane theory, but the abundant salts in the lakebed of Soda Lake itself argues that the Carrizo Plain was at one point in the distant past covered with water containing a high volume of dissolved salts, which were left behind when that water was trapped with no outlet and eventually evaporated. We would not expect normal rainfall to produce alkali flats such as those found in Soda Lake or at the Great Salt Lake under uniformitarian circumstances.

Previous posts in this blog from all the way back in 2011 and 2013 quote Walt Brown on the subject of trapped floodwater in regards to the Golden Gate (at the entrance to the San Francisco Bay) and the arid and salty Tarim Basin (in the eastern reaches of China, home to the famous mummies of Urumqi, also spelled Urumxi or Urumchi).

Further, as this excellent geological guide to the Carrizo Plain explains, the plain itself contains U-shaped geological formations known as synclines in which layers are uplifted and exposed along the two sides of the "U" -- which often produces distinctive parallel razor-edge ridgelines and "hogbacks" which often make good sites for the discovery of metals and minerals: see this discussion from 2012 of the geology in the location of the ancient copper mines of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

I wonder if the unique geology of the Carrizo Plain may also contribute to lines of earth-energy, which contributed to the selection and use of Painted Rock as a sacred site by Native peoples stretching back for thousands of years. Authors such as Walter Bosley and Joseph P. Farrell have discussed the existence of an earth-grid of telluric energy, the currents of which may be influenced by the shaping of the terrain (along with other factors) and which appears to have been understood by ancient cultures and civilizations in the remote past. Author John Michell has also explored this subject in depth. For previous posts discussing this fascinating possibility, see for example:

Below is another satellite image, showing the location of Painted Rock in relation to Soda Lake and the photographs above (the plain around Painted Rock was also blanketed with beautiful wildflowers on Friday when I visited). The red arrow drawn onto the map points to Painted Rock, barely visible at this scale as a tiny circular form above the tip of the arrow. Note that a prominent ridgeline running north from the Caliente Range, just to the right of the arrow in the image, points almost directly to Painted Rock (perhaps this feature, along with other aspects of the terrain and geology of the Carrizo region, contribute to the sacred power of the site):

Perhaps such currents correspond to increased receptivity or capacity for connection with the Invisible or Infinite Realm -- a possibility which would argue that we should all spend as much time as possible visiting national parks and monuments and other locations with distinctive and majestic terrain features.I also found myself wondering during this recent visit why the wildflower bloom was so spectacular in the vicinity of the southern end of Soda Lake and the Carrizo plain -- and why there were not similar blooms taking place on the miles of winding roads leading up to the valley.Perhaps earth-energy currents have something to do with wildflower blooms as well!

above: Close-up of some of the flowers from the vicinity of the first photograph at the top of this post. Present in this image we can see an abundance of tidytips (layia platyglossa) as well as some intermittent blue lupine (lupinus albifrons).